In many scientific and commercial applications, it is necessary to combine and manipulate massive amounts of graphic data existing in the form of large numbers of individual bit-mapped data files. For example, in creating animation, the animated picture may contain many individually moving components, each of which may occupy many different positions in the various frames of a moving picture sequence.
Various techniques exist for drawing, modifying, cutting, posting, importing and exporting graphic data in a graphic file, but none of these techniques allow the operator to cause several graphic files to interact with each other in accordance with operator-selected rules or functions.
Furthermore, in the conventional disk operating system (DOS), each graphic file to be created or manipulated must have an alphanumeric file name in the file directory for storage and retrieval. When large numbers of graphic files are stored in memory, the normal DOS directory approach can rapidly become quite awkward for a human operator to use.